McCarthy's book is about ideas. It is not seeking an
immediate change to anyone's behavior. But the author understands that to see
reality properly has profound implications for how we act. And so, he has done
impressive and important work to bring the philosophical discussion on marriage
back to its foundation, that is, its basis in the morality of human action. He
does so in the context of modern English and postmodern thought, illustrating
the deficient efforts of the New Natural Law School to defend marriage in an
adequate way.

To begin, we need to place McCarthy's book, as well as the
arguments that he puts forth in it, in their proper philosophical frame. Moral
action has three elements: the object of the act, the intention, and the
circumstances. The object is what is done, the intention is why it is done, and
the circumstances are the accidental characteristics surrounding the act. For
an action to be good, all three parts of the act need to be good. If one
element is evil, then the action as a whole is evil. Ethicists study the
different parts of the act, sometimes in isolation from the other parts, in
order to consider whether a given part of it is good or evil.

Over the last few centuries, leading British and American
ethicists have been trying to greatly de-emphasize or remove the importance of
the object of the action when evaluating whether it is good or evil. They have
been doing so because to assess the object of the action requires a rational understanding
of God, creation, and human nature that the Anglo-Americans have refused to
acknowledge. And so, much of their ethical reasoning becomes based on
intentions and sentiments in relation to rational constructs relating to
justice, rights, and freedom.

The New Natural Law theorists arose in the 20th
Century, and they arose within the context of a British and American culture
that belittled the moral insights that previous generations of philosophers had
made into human nature, God, Providence, and the nature of creation. In order
to meet American and British philosophers on their own turf, the New Natural
Lawyers attempted to come up with philosophical arguments to defend traditional
morality without direct reference to God, Nature and Creation.

Instead, they honed in on intentions, and how intentions
relate to various goods that humans could choose to guide their lives: life,
knowledge, sociability, play, aesthetics, practical reasonableness, and
religion, see A
Summary of John Finnis’s Theory of Natural Law. If, they claimed, we
develop our practical reason properly, we can come up with norms that guide our
behavior without having to delve into questions that the British or now American
Empire finds uncomfortable with respect to God, Creation, Nature or Man. Armed
with these new norms at our disposal, we can convince our neighbors to accept
them, along with the basic guiding principles of the natural law.

THE NEW NATURAL LAW

McCarthy's book begins midstream a debate with the New
Natural Lawyers. He does so because they have had their influence in Catholic
circles, often replacing other Catholic scholars in important positions in
seminaries and moral philosophy and theology departments, and, in places like
the United States, put themselves forth as leaders of explaining Catholic
morality in the public sphere, especially when it comes to explaining the
nature of marriage to their secular foes.

McCarthy feels that the Natural Lawyers end up following a
Kantian form of reasoning about intentions that results in an excessive
absolutism. For example, they equate someone choosing to use contraception or
adopting a contraceptive mentality with failing to value human life or
inappropriately relating themselves to the goods of life. Of course, anti-life
dispositions might be present in persons who choose to contracept, or to spread
anti-life policies. For example, Bill Gates once proudly commented that through
vaccination, sterilization, and birth control programs various international
aid groups could reduce the population of a planet by several billion. But, the
debate between New Natural Lawyers and their opponents can quickly become one
of questioning intentions or imagining potential intentions of people ad
infinitum. But, as the old saying goes, it is always better to assume that
people have good intentions, even if the road to Hell is paved with them. The
conflation of these two sayings leads us to see that we must also consider the
object of the act when considering the morality of human action, and that
requires a discussion of God, nature, and man.

In the case of Kenya, independently of any intentions, when
the Kenyan Bishops realized that a vaccination program was making the women of
their country incapable of getting pregnant, they spoke forcefully to encourage
women to avoid vaccination programs. Sure, the intentions of the Bill Gateses
of the world are nefarious, but, independent of those intentions, it is not
good to take vaccines that will make one sterile.

Likewise, McCarthy thinks that it is futile to engage in a
form of reasoning that leads the ethicist to ask whether someone has a
practical hatred for a future baby if he engages in contraception or natural
family planning. McCarthy shows that to excessively emphasize intention,
because an ethicist does not want to resort to a discussion of God, Creation, and
nature, leads to an inability to tell the difference between contraception,
which is a form of lying, and natural family planning, which is a form of not
speaking, and not lying. That is to say, there is an analogy between language
and the language that we speak with our bodies. We should always speak the
truth. To lie is a sin, but to not speak is not a sin. Likewise, our marriages
should be open to the truth of love between the spouses and children. To
willfully block the pathways of life is the equivalent of a lie.

McCarthy shows, as Russell Hittinger did before him, that
the New Natural Lawyers always, in the end, have to have discussions about God
and nature to resolve the intellectual dead ends into which they lead
themselves and others. In other words, if we are going to discuss marriage, we
need to have a discussion about marriage within the context of discussing God,
creation, and nature. Yes, it might be difficult to have these discussions, as
one could easily see from the way that popular culture might mock anyone
attempting to defend morality these days, but better to face the full range of
real questions in order to understand the nature of marriage, than to dilly
dally over debating intentions and sentiments with one's opponents.

In short, McCarthy wants us to take a serious look at the
object of the action as revealing the meaning of acts, and not just the
intentions. In fact, while intentions can be evil, it is better to focus on
something that is more objective, and less easily manipulated, than intentions.

MARRIAGE IS A PARTNERSHIP

Marriage is a partnership for life, and the deeds that are
part of marriage are part of that partnership. We need to look at human nature
as well as the purpose of marriage, in order to understand and present a full
account of marital morality. Nature determines what are or what are not the
goods of marriage, not my capacity to reason about my intentions. Speaking
about nature also leads to speaking about what God has created and what is the
intention of God in creating each being to exist as it does. It leads us to
understand what is needed for the human to function well or flourish.

There is also a relationship between what a couple does in
their home and the society around them. Social institutions influence marriage
and vice versa. At the same time, there is an essence to marriage, an aspect to
it that is independent of any social conventions. So, marriage is not a
construct that can be manipulated to serve various social goods according to
our good intentions.

McCarthy, as we said, focuses on the species of the act, or
the object of the act, when assessing the evil of contraception. There is an
analogy between lying and contracepting. The body speaks a certain language,
just as the mouth does. Both have social effects. Just as one cannot lie in
speech, but one can remain silent. So too, one cannot lie with one's body, but
can remain silent.

McCarthy's argument has important effects at how we view
marriage and homosexual efforts to equate what they do with marriage. There is
a teleology that is natural to marriage between a man and a woman that does not
depend on their intention to fulfill social goods. While it might be
rhetorically difficult in our age to discuss nature with respect to marriage,
McCarthy understands that it is better to do so than to focus on how our
intentions relate to the good of marriage in relation to the goods of practical
reason without reference to nature.

In later chapters, McCarthy takes the student through an
extended discussion of the natural desires of man, and how those desires are
tamed by marriage, resulting in flourishing persons in a partnership. Going
back to the Symposium, and including the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, marriage
results in a real union that is the proper result of the desires that man by
nature possesses. Virtue in this area has much to say about the building up of
the common good.

METAPHYSICS AND MARRIAGE

As McCarthy surveys the debates of the New Natural Lawyers,
he sees that they often find themselves in a position in which they need to
argue for the metaphysical and teleological realities that they initially flee.
That is, they have to resort to arguments about the nature of the human person,
the nature of his actions, and how those actions make themselves manifest in
marriage and society. Marriage is the institution that conforms to our created
nature in relationship to the goods that make up the common good (also
determined by nature).

The husband and wife, expressing their love in a union that
open to children, participate in an institution that leads to human and
societal flourishing. To deviate from this ideal, in specific or overall
instances, is to fail to see one's nature properly and act on it. It is to fail
to relate properly to God and to the other in the pursuit of friendship with
God together.

McCarthy's book ends on a rather ominous note. He references
the works of Faramerz Dabhoilwala, who has shown in a series of articles and
books the relationship that the likes of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill
saw between religious freedom and homosexual rights or the cause of sexual
freedom. That is to say, that the promoters of free market capitalism took
their own theories seriously. They saw that to divorce human action from nature
and metaphysical truths would mean that anything goes in all matters of
morality, in personal action, public action, and economic action. Thus, to take
seriously the principles of the likes of Mill or Bentham is to lead to certain
paralysis when discussing public morality or freedom of religion. Their
principles lead to the effective collapse of ethics and the free reign of
chaos.

McCarthy argues that when we understand the urge to possess,
we see its fruition in an institution, property, that gives rise to an orderly
way for men to fruitfully realize their power. If there is no property, then
there is no possibility for something like robbery to exist, or all attempts to
own are forms of theft. Likewise, our desire to procreate must give rise to a
natural institution, marriage, an institution that enables men to fruitfully
realize their powers at the service of the common good.

Ethical Sex: Sexual Choices and Their Nature and Meaning by Anthony McCarthy. Is sex important? How concerned should we be about our sexual choices and their effects? Is sexual desire best understood in terms of pleasure, love, interpersonal union and/or procreation? In an era of radical redefinition of marriage and rapidly changing views about the nature of sex, Ethical Sex seeks to bring some philosophical clarity to our thinking. This book explores reasons as to why our sexual behaviour is uniquely morally important. It examines arguments for and against differing views on what might constitute "ethical sex." Anyone interested in the philosophy of sex and love, the nature of marriage, metaphysics and the human world around us will want to engage with this original and provocative work. 326 pp. $25 + S&H, Paperback. Read Reviews